Bring Back the Floppy Disk! (Sort of)

You may think I'm a bit of a nostalgiac (and I am) for saying this, but we need to bring back the floppy disk.

Okay, no.

I don't mean the 1.44mb piece of plastic and metal that you used to hoard in the early nineties to store your compressed Weird Al Yankovic songs on. No, I'm saying we need to bring back something like floppy disks and make them BETTER!

Why would I dare say that? Why, in the world of these flash drives and SD cards and blu-ray discs and crystal data storage, would we dare bring back THOSE things?! Those horribly SLOW, LOW-LATENCY, NOISY..... THINGS?!

Why? This is why...

In today's world, we have three major types of data storage (not counting magnetic tape cartridges - which are actually, like, almost ten gazillion times better than HDDs): magnetic hard disks, flash disks (like usb flash drives and SSDs), and optical discs (those round lasery things that my Pawpaw can't pronounce the name of). In truth, these are all pretty good mediums with their differences. The thing is, hard drives and flash drives are relatively expensive, and while CDs are cheap, they aren't what I'd use to read and write data (if you buy the rewritable ones at all).

So what's the deal with this "breeng bahk duh floppeh" business? Well, with all the different data storage mediums today, none is really cheap. And the only one that is really cheap is only really good for writing to once, and it gets damaged easily. But what was so great about floppies? 1) They were cheap, 2) they could hold smaller amounts of data, which was usually all you needed for some documents, and 3) they were rigid.

If I was to write a program or get some funny pictures or whatever, and I wanted to loan it to a friend, I'd want something cheap and low-data to give it to him on. I'd never trust them with a 4GB or 32GB flash drive. Of course, I'd need more than 1.44 megabytes - maybe around 30 or 50 on a disk. I'd also want it to be rugged so that I wouldn't have to put it in a ziploc bag or case just to hand it to him on. I also wouldn't want to spend anywhere between ten and twenty dollars on one - I'd really want something between 25 cents and two dollars. That's why disks would be a great medium!

Look, if we started making the same little square floppy disks that we were using back in the day today, we'd be able to store a whole lot more data on them and make them a whole lot cheaper. They'd be the perfect format for small stuff! That's what they were a long time ago! Face it people - this is what we don't have, and it would be pretty nice to have it. Not to mention that tape lasts longer than flash drives or hard drives (even though I have a nice 20 year old Apple 20mb hard drive still working).

Alright, folks. I've made my point. I just wish someone would make my disks. Adios!